Patient zero refers to an individual who becomes the first known case of an outbreak of a communicable disease in a specific geographical location. The term isn’t a new one, but in context of the pandemic, it refers to the first person diagnosed with Covid-19.
Merriam Websters dictionary defines patient zero as “a person identified as the first to become infected with an illness or disease in an outbreak.
-The quest to find patient zero, the first person to contract the new virus, has revealed the first known case occurred in Wuhan.”
An article published for the BBC on 23 February 2020 says: “As the cases of coronavirus increase in China and around the world, the hunt is on to identify ‘patient zero’…Chinese authorities originally reported that the first coronavirus case was on 31 December [2019] and many of the first cases of the pneumonia-like infection were immediately connected to a seafood and animal market in Wuhan, in the Hubei province” (Duarte).
Before the Trump administration restricted travel from China, it’s likely that Covid-19 was already spreading throughout the United States. The first person to be diagnosed with coronavirus was a man who tested positive in Seattle, Washington, on 21 January 2020. He had previously traveled from Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began. There was an outbreak of coronavirus in a nursing home outside of Seattle and cases soared. Washington state reported on 29 February 2020 its first death from Covid-19 which may have been the first pandemic death in the United States (Singh).
In March 2022 an independent film produced the movie “Coronavirus: Patient Zero (2020)” and uploaded it to YouTube. A Washington state clinic sees a large number of patients, “suffering from a new outbreak of illness, Dr. Stone (Tim Ross), the head physician, tries to understand the cause and who is Patient Zero as the CDC moves in to quarantine the clinic in a desperate attempt to stop the spread” (Coronavirus: Patient Zero).
Social Media Trends as of June 30, 2022
Facebook #patientzero: 3,600 people are posting about this
YouTube #patientzero: 320 videos and 196 channels
Google Trends: patient zero appeared during the first week of December 2019 when the pandemic started in Wuhan, China. It reached its peak during the week of March 15, 2020 which also coincided with a national lockdown in the United States.
Sources:
“Coronavirus: Patient Zero (2020) | Full Movie | Tim Ross | Samantha Melvin | Bobby Lacer.” YouTube. March 19, 2022. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXBH6qTd804.
Duarte, Fernando. “Who is ‘patient zero’ in the coronavirus outbreak?” BBC.com. 23 February 2020. URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-harmful-hunt-for-covid-19s-patient-zero.
“Have you seen patient zero? – #COVID-19” MakeAMeme.org. URL: https://makeameme.org/meme/have-you-seen-2486856420.
“Patient Zero.” Merriam Webster. URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patient%20zero.
Singh, Maanvi. “Tracing ‘patient zero’: why America’s first coronavirus death may for ever go unmarked.” The Guardian. 26 May 2020. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/26/us-coronavirus-patient-zero-100000-deaths.